I saw he did not consider what he said as a compliment, but I was vain enough to want to know what he did think of me, so I asked: “And in what way am I like General Laguerre?”
The idea of our similarity seemed to amuse Aiken, for he continued to grin.
“Oh, you’ll see when we meet him,” he said. “I can’t explain it. You two are just different from other people—that’s all. He’s old-fashioned like you, if you know what I mean, and young—”
“Why, he’s an old man,” I corrected.
“He’s old enough to be your grandfather,” Aiken laughed, “but I say he’s young—like you, the way you are.”
Aiken knew that it annoyed me when he pretended I was so much younger than himself, and I had started on some angry reply, when I was abruptly interrupted.
A tall, ragged man rose suddenly from behind a rock, and presented a rifle. He was so close to Aiken that the rifle almost struck him in the face. Aiken threw up his hands, and fell back with such a jerk that he lost his balance, and would have fallen had he not pitched forward and clasped the mule around the neck. I pulled my mule to a halt, and held my hands as high as I could raise them. The man moved his rifle from side to side so as to cover each of us in turn, and cried in English, “Halt! Who goes there?”
Aiken had not told me the answer to that challenge, so I kept silent. I could hear Jose behind me interrupting his prayers with little sobs of fright.
Aiken scrambled back into an upright position, held up his hands, and cried: “Confound you, we are travellers, going to the capital on business. Who the devil are you?”
“Qui vive?” the man demanded over the barrel of his gun.